So you've worked your way up from lowly rat killing farmboy-warrior to leader of the Fighter's Guild. Now what?What About A Squad Based Approach? I've asked this before, but I've been thinking of a different angle. Using a sort of Morrowind/Oblivion game (open world, optional main quest, lots of skills) and assuming that you can't radically alter the gameplay (or people will freak that it's not the game they bought) what would work for becoming guild master in a single-player RPG. (Emphasis for those folks who read RPG as MMORPG) So what about a squad based approach that's available from level 1? Let's say that there are a couple of ways to do this. If you have the coin, you can hire mercenaries to accompany you throughout the world. Helping a town may give you peasants/apprentices who travel with you for free, but for whom you're largely responsible. Alternately, you can join a guild. What Can The Guild Do For You? The benefits of working with a guild would be that you don't have to pay or support your fellow adventurers, work is easier to come by, you get free gear/supplies based on how well the guild is doing and the guild builds more places to respawn / rest the better it does in the world. The downside would be that you have to share the spoils. You also have to take whatever missions they offer to advance. The quality of your pool of free guild mates would also be a function of the guild's overall success, which would have to be somewhat simulated to blend in your mission successes. To avoid cannon fodder tactics, constantly losing allies would weaken the guild over time. This I think would hurt your reputation and reduce the pool of talent, possibly even causing you to be expelled. So Now I'm Guild Master At this level you should stop taking missions and start giving them. But that would be a management game inconsistent with level 1. So any management gameplay would have to be EXTREMELY abstract yet still have a significant enough effect (not sure what this would look like). Maybe the best approach would be securing funds, gear and status for the guild more directly by adventuring with their best. Risky missions might raise notoriety/reputation, attracting more and better NPCs. To improve the guild directly you could secure trainers, which cause members to automatically skill up/level over time (again roughly simulated). You could also choose where guild houses go, again roughly simulating where the guild is putting its efforts. Challengers There technically could be some kind of simulated rivalry with NPCs provided the gameplay was available at lower levels. A thieves guild, for instance, could have members setting you up for ambushes. Fighters might have to mock duel for top position. Mages might have arena battles that show skill. So it might be a paradox of gameplay-- improving your guild improves your lot, but also brings more challengers out of the woodwork. Thoughts?

If the guilds are hierarchical, the whole "assigning quests" interface can appear as soon as the player has enough standing in the guild to give missions to the even newer newbs. With this, along with the ability to make a "accompany me" type mission, will have the player used to both ends of the mission thing right off the bat (well, not immediately but shortly after joining and gaining standing). And nothing prevents a guild leader from going out and doing his own dirty work especially if it is big or important (although he might bring an army of the best guild-mates with him).

What about setting policies?
Mass training vs. guru-and-apprentice. This is pretty much quantity vs. quality.
Pay vs. free perks for higher members.
You're top dog, but do you have a council below you and how powerful are they?

The extra interface would just be an options-like screen that let's you shape your Faction into something more to your liking. Though to actually change these things you might have to do certain quests like framing the council, finding gurus or just make sure you have enough faction leaders on your side by doing quests for them.

What is the main goal of the game? If it's to become the guild leader, then once you become the guild leader, that's it, you win. I don't think that's what you're after, so let's say it's accumulation of wealth or fame. Being guild leader would have to help you achieve these goals.

The world being open ended means there are always some baddies to kill, caravans to escort and stuff like that. The town's mayor could see the new Ogre's den as a threat and post a job offer. You, as a guild leader, check these offers and create offers of your own in your guild. If the mayor offers 1000gp to kill the Ogres, you can turn around and offer 800gp to your guildmates and say this is a job for 3 persons of levels 5 to 10. Upon completion, you give the rewards to the guild members, put 150gp in the guild fund and keep 50gp for yourself. If you do a good job of managing the job offers, your guild will grow in power by attracting new recruits and wealth, which will allow you to take more profitable jobs. It essentially becomes a management job.

You could also have to deal with the town's politics by passing laws to favorise your guild, try to undermine competor's guilds, invest in the town economy to create better gear for your members and so on.

In Morrowind and even more in Oblivion you had the introduction of management style game play via the purchasing of houses and the subsequent decorating of them. I think that system alone is worth discussion and added depth. I bring it up though to amke the point that instead of abstracting the fun out of management style gameplay, why not admit to its fun and add it in all over as part of the main game? What if you could hire people at any level and unofficially form your own group? What if you could acquire resources and virtual land and build your own place? If the player is given enough control over the world it would be interesting to actually go about controlling it. Right now it isn't because the world hardly reacts to anything that wasn't prescripted meaning you can't have deep game play by being a leader or builder.

About guilds specifically, it would be good game play to allow a taste of the control aspects early on, but also not deny the leader their blood bath fun. The leader could also be denied absolute control by having a system where there is a council under him that collectively may have more power to veto him than he has to push through, but he is still the leader of.

All of these things though rely on a game system where the player can essentially create content by doing things in the game world that the game reacts to implicitly without pre-scripting by designers but instead a method of reacting that can be applied generally.

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Original post by Wavinator So Now I'm Guild Master At this level you should stop taking missions and start giving them. But that would be a management game inconsistent with level 1.

How about introducing the player to managerial decisions a little bit at a time?

The guild job board has three quests, and only two teams. The player picks guild mates for his team to do one mission, the remaining NPCs choose one of the other two missions, and the last mission goes unchallenged. The landscape changes according to who has been sent where.

After a promotion, the player also gets to choose which of the remaining two missions the NPCs will attempt. The player is then more involved in distributing the troops, rather than just cherry picking favorites for his team. He might even want to become involved in recruiting specialists.

And if the teams end up at the quest locations after each mission, then planning who goes where and when could be entertaining. Maybe it takes two missions to get to the Volcano-of-Dragons, but there are several ways to get there. So there's an understated Risk-like game of unit distribution.

For my spaceship RPG I've been looking at fleet operations. When the player only has a lowly ship they can join up with one of the existing NPC fleets or choose to go it alone. Eventually the player will be able to afford a large ship that a fleet can be formed around. This can be worked for hauling fleets, mining fleets or combat fleets.

In addition to this the players standing would dictate what fleets they can fly with. Have a high criminal standings and only pirate fleets will accept you but watch your back. Have a good standing and fleets will ask you to join for expensive operations...

In games like Oblivion once you become the leader of a guild the tasks you manage and options that become available to you are so anti-climatic it’s a joke. I've always just done it to get the position so I've completed it, once its time for me to start making choices from the select few I normally just turn my back on it, mostly because its a single player game and the NPC's really don't care.

I think if a core feature of the game was built around guild power and influence then it would become more interesting. Players would pick which guilds to join based on the bonuses they might receive through progression or one guild over another because it doesn't have the murderers after them, could be heaps of options.

Once players accept the title of Guild Master, I say accept because some people might prefer not to become guild master, then they would need to have enough responsibility and power to actually make them believe they are the Guild Master. Depending on the visuals of the game setting up a believable system shouldn't be too hard and there are already some great ideas in the comments.

As long as the content is there I'm sure players would at least try it and I'd be happy as long as when I'm finished I could retire with a big settlement payout ^^